Meta announced on Tuesday (7) that it will end its fact-checking program, a policy established to curb the spread of misinformation on its social media, in a clear sign of the company’s repositioning for the new Trump administration, which calls for online free speech.
Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, stated that it will now allow more expression, rely on its users to correct inaccurate and false posts, and adopt a more personalized approach to political content. It described the changes in regretful terms, saying it had strayed too far from its values in the past decade.
“It’s time to return to our roots around free speech,” said Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, in a video announcing the changes. The company’s fact-checking system, he added, “has reached a point where there are too many mistakes and too much censorship.”
Zuckerberg admitted that there would be more “bad things” on the platforms as a result of the decision. “The reality is that this is a trade-off,” he said. “This means we will catch fewer bad things, but we will also reduce the number of posts and accounts of innocent people that we accidentally remove.”
Since Donald J. Trump’s victory in November, few major companies have worked as openly to gain the attention of the elected president as Meta. Trump, during his first administration, accused social media platforms of censoring conservative voices. In a series of announcements during this presidential transition period, Meta drastically changed its strategy in response to what Zuckerberg called the election’s “cultural turning point.”
Zuckerberg dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in November, and Meta later donated $1 million to support the new president’s inauguration. Last week, Zuckerberg elevated Joel Kaplan, Meta’s highest-ranking executive closest to the Republican Party, to the company’s most senior political position. And on Monday (6), Zuckerberg announced that Dana White, head of the Ultimate Fighting Championship and an ally of Trump, would join Meta’s board.
Source: The New York Times